Illness and Communicable Diseases

When groups of people are in close contact with one another for extended periods of time, the risk is high for the spread of illness and disease. That is why schools observe disease prevention and control.

Health Services Guidelines for When to

Keep Your Child Home From School

 How Sick is Too Sick

Cold Flu or Stomach Flu

INFLUENZA (FLU) - In accordance with the Kansas Department of Health & Environment regulations, each person with a case of influenza shall remain in home isolation for 5 (five) days following onset of illness or until fever free without fever reducing medication for 24 hours, whichever is longer, or for the duration of illness if the case is immune-compromised, except when seeking medical care (you may leave the home to go to the doctor). For clarification, each person diagnosed with the flu must remain at home for five days or until fever free without medication for 24 hours, whichever is longer and may only leave to seek medical care (to go to the doctor). 

** Wichita Public Schools requires written documentation from a Health Care Provider confirming a positive flu diagnosis for attendance excusal. Please contact your school nurse for more information.

ILLNESS - To protect your child and other children from disease outbreaks, we must ask parents to help by keeping their children home when ill.  Students with a temperature of 100.4 degrees or greater (without fever reducing medication) are considered to have a fever, should not be at school, and will be sent home.  Other symptoms with or without a temperature of 100.4 degrees including behavior changes, headache, sore throat, nausea, coughing, and/or sneezing may indicate illness.  If illness is suspected, the student will be sent home with their parent/parent designee.  A student leaving school because of illness cannot ride the bus.

COMMUNICABLE DISEASE - We may ask parents to seek a medical diagnosis and treatment when the suspicion includes a communicable disease. For example, something simple like a rash may be nothing, like dermatitis, or it may be seriously contagious and potentially dangerous, like rubella (German Measles).

Even when there may be no treatment available, we might still require a definitive diagnosis from a health care provider. Please bear with us in these situations. It is much wiser to contain one rash, than to allow the spread of a serious illness throughout a school.

Kansas laws direct exactly how we must work to control the spread of communicable diseases. Wichita Public Schools follow the Kansas Classroom Handbook of Communicable Diseases. Contact your school nurse if you have any questions.